Accessing video hosting servers to upload, playback, and interact with hosted multimedia has traditionally been accomplished via standalone applications on client devices and browsers displaying static websites. Standalone applications that access multimedia stored on the video hosting servers lack all of the features that can be provided. Additionally, the large number of available standalone applications are not interoperable and each of them can have steep learning curves.
Similarly, static websites can make it difficult to see related media, and the layouts can be cumbersome. The owners of different channels are also limited in how they can customize the layout of their channel.